ACE Company Inside Visions provides useful analytics to offline businesses about their clients and audience. They convert images into information, like the audience’s gender, age group or how long they look at an ad. Born in Coimbra (Portugal), it is incubated by the ACE Partner IPN. They are now looking for an investment to make it in the UK, where they are already present.

It all started with Miguel Peixoto and an idea. While working at an automotive company, he was sure there had to be a better way to know their lost market than counting visitors manually at the cars’ showroom. After leaving the company, Miguel asked his brother Paulo, a professor at the University of Coimbra specialized in Computer Visions and Automation, if it could be done automatically. With a positive response, he then decided to “take the leap” and “create his own company”, in his own words.

After the required development and optimization of the face detection technology, self-funded by another project in the e-learning sector, the first product was ready to go to the market: Face Click®. Flexible, easy to install and operate, it is tailored specifically to retailers. It ensures greater in-store product adequacy, through the detection of clients’ profiles, by gender and age. Face Click® is a powerful statistical tool with which, through its WEB version, you can easily manage multi-sites with multiple cameras in multiple stores.

The next solution, based in the same technology, is to be applied in advertising – Target Ads® allows adapting the ads displayed on digital screens according to the person that’s looking, in real time. All of these statistics (which ad is more popular, for how long women and men look at it, did anyone smile at it, etc) are then provided to the client.

It was of need to bring this solution to the United Kingdom, where’s a much broader net of digital signage, and the company already received requests from Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Brazil, United Kingdom and the United States. Now, Inside Visions’ CEO Miguel is focused on raising investment: “You must get to market quickly and, for that, investment is needed".

Inside Visions has recently won the Best Startup Award from “Prémio Caixa Empreender” in Portugal. They hope this distinction brings them the much needed visibility to access international investor networks.

Their experience in ACE

Inside Visions has heard about the ACE programme through ACE Partner IPN - Instituto Pedro Nunes in Portugal. Their ACE Experience has been incredibly positive so far. "We were able to connect with other innovative companies at the ACE Summit, after evaluating which would potentially be the best partners for us in foreign markets", says Miguel Peixoto. The CEO stated that since then, very promising business opportunities have been developed and, in the end, "this is what matters".

Their expectations for the ACE Programme are that it continues to be a platform that can gather companies at the same stage, with the same goals, and that fit well together.

Now, if you didn’t understand any of those words, here is simple explanation: INVEA-TECH develops and markets comprehensive network solutions. Still not enough? Watch one of their webinars and learn more about their activities.

If the tech talk isn’t for you, what you really need to know is that INVEA-TECH is a fine example of a hi-tech spin-off with a robust background from academia. With no extra seed funding the company keeps on growing steadily for several years. They are the leader in the flow monitoring & NBA market which is considered by Gartner as the next generation network security trend. INVEA represents the new generation of cybersecurity companies that follow the success of the likes of AVG, AVAST and ESET which scored in the field of antivirus solutions. Solutions offered by INVEA go several steps further monitoring network behaviour and not only the actual infection and intrusion.

In 2007 workers at Masaryk University got together with workers from the Brno University of Technology and CESNET to form INVEA-TECH as a spin-off. Today they are responsible for monitoring more than a third of the internet in the Czech Republic and offer network solutions all over the world to customers like T-Mobile, Siemens or Raiffeisen Bank. Their FlowMon system was commended at the CeBIT fair in Hannover twice. In 2013 INVEA-TECH was recognized among Deloitte CE Technology Fast 50 as one of the 50 fastest growing tech companies in Central Europe.

INVEA-TECH with its headquarters located in Brno, Czech Republic, is deeply connected to the South Moravian Innovation Centre – participating in professional workshops such as ‘120 Seconds’ networking, helping them to find business partners. "We appreciate the opportunities for networking activities and professional consultation at the JIC,” says Jiří Tobola, Business Director of INVEA-TECH. INVEA is a company completely set up by developers and tech guys.

Their ACE Experience

INVEA-TECH was introduced to the ACE Programme by recommendation of the South Moravian Innovation Centre. Since then, they have participated in the ACE Summit and recently signed agreement with ACE Partner bwcon, on support provided for participation in a major IT security expo.

Thanks to ACE project, INVEA-TECH will have an opportunity to prepare well in advance for one of the most important IT security exhibition in the world it-sa that will be held 7 – 9 October 2014 in Exhibition Centre Nuremberg, Germany. They will be provided with support in marketing, PR activities and arrangement of meetings with potential business partners from DACH region.

In the words of Rostislav Vocilka, CEO: "under ACE we would like to build an effective marketing strategy that would show our potential customers in Germany how they can effectively protect their company´s networks with us. After the NSA espionage leaks the benefit of having a network behaviour analysis and monitoring tool from a company based in Europe is a strategic advantage and we would like ACE to help us to market this unique value proposition especially in Germany".

Now, if you didn’t understand any of those words, here is simple explanation: INVEA-TECH develops and markets comprehensive network solutions. Still not enough? Watch one of their webinars and learn more about their activities.

If the tech talk isn’t for you, what you really need to know is that INVEA-TECH is a fine example of a hi-tech spin-off with a robust background from academia. With no extra seed funding the company keeps on growing steadily for several years. They are the leader in the flow monitoring & NBA market which is considered by Gartner as the next generation network security trend. INVEA represents the new generation of cybersecurity companies that follow the success of the likes of AVG, AVAST and ESET which scored in the field of antivirus solutions. Solutions offered by INVEA go several steps further monitoring network behaviour and not only the actual infection and intrusion.

In 2007 workers at Masaryk University got together with workers from the Brno University of Technology and CESNET to form INVEA-TECH as a spin-off. Today they are responsible for monitoring more than a third of the internet in the Czech Republic and offer network solutions all over the world to customers like T-Mobile, Siemens or Raiffeisen Bank. Their FlowMon system was commended at the CeBIT fair in Hannover twice. In 2013 INVEA-TECH was recognized among Deloitte CE Technology Fast 50 as one of the 50 fastest growing tech companies in Central Europe.

INVEA-TECH with its headquarters located in Brno, Czech Republic, is deeply connected to the South Moravian Innovation Centre – participating in professional workshops such as ‘120 Seconds’ networking, helping them to find business partners. "We appreciate the opportunities for networking activities and professional consultation at the JIC,” says Jiří Tobola, Business Director of INVEA-TECH. INVEA is a company completely set up by developers and tech guys.

Their ACE Experience

INVEA-TECH was introduced to the ACE Programme by recommendation of the South Moravian Innovation Centre. Since then, they have participated in the ACE Summit and recently signed agreement with ACE Partner bwcon, on support provided for participation in a major IT security expo.

Thanks to ACE project, INVEA-TECH will have an opportunity to prepare well in advance for one of the most important IT security exhibition in the world it-sa that will be held 7 – 9 October 2014 in Exhibition Centre Nuremberg, Germany. They will be provided with support in marketing, PR activities and arrangement of meetings with potential business partners from DACH region.

In the words of Rostislav Vocilka, CEO: "under ACE we would like to build an effective marketing strategy that would show our potential customers in Germany how they can effectively protect their company´s networks with us. After the NSA espionage leaks the benefit of having a network behaviour analysis and monitoring tool from a company based in Europe is a strategic advantage and we would like ACE to help us to market this unique value proposition especially in Germany".

ACE Company Inside Visions provides useful analytics to offline businesses about their clients and audience. They convert images into information, like the audience’s gender, age group or how long they look at an ad. Born in Coimbra (Portugal), it is incubated by the ACE Partner IPN. They are now looking for an investment to make it in the UK, where they are already present.

It all started with Miguel Peixoto and an idea. While working at an automotive company, he was sure there had to be a better way to know their lost market than counting visitors manually at the cars’ showroom. After leaving the company, Miguel asked his brother Paulo, a professor at the University of Coimbra specialized in Computer Visions and Automation, if it could be done automatically. With a positive response, he then decided to “take the leap” and “create his own company”, in his own words.

After the required development and optimization of the face detection technology, self-funded by another project in the e-learning sector, the first product was ready to go to the market: Face Click®. Flexible, easy to install and operate, it is tailored specifically to retailers. It ensures greater in-store product adequacy, through the detection of clients’ profiles, by gender and age. Face Click® is a powerful statistical tool with which, through its WEB version, you can easily manage multi-sites with multiple cameras in multiple stores.

The next solution, based in the same technology, is to be applied in advertising – Target Ads® allows adapting the ads displayed on digital screens according to the person that’s looking, in real time. All of these statistics (which ad is more popular, for how long women and men look at it, did anyone smile at it, etc) are then provided to the client.

It was of need to bring this solution to the United Kingdom, where’s a much broader net of digital signage, and the company already received requests from Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Brazil, United Kingdom and the United States. Now, Inside Visions’ CEO Miguel is focused on raising investment: “You must get to market quickly and, for that, investment is needed".

Inside Visions has recently won the Best Startup Award from “Prémio Caixa Empreender” in Portugal. They hope this distinction brings them the much needed visibility to access international investor networks.

Their experience in ACE

Inside Visions has heard about the ACE programme through ACE Partner IPN - Instituto Pedro Nunes in Portugal. Their ACE Experience has been incredibly positive so far. "We were able to connect with other innovative companies at the ACE Summit, after evaluating which would potentially be the best partners for us in foreign markets", says Miguel Peixoto. The CEO stated that since then, very promising business opportunities have been developed and, in the end, "this is what matters".

Their expectations for the ACE Programme are that it continues to be a platform that can gather companies at the same stage, with the same goals, and that fit well together.